Mr. Sleeman Is Coming

     Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge!

     I watched this film from 2001 because I have a DVD of it given to me by my sister a few years ago, and also because Nicole Kidman stars in the lead female role.  Having finally gotten around to watching it, I'm not sorry I did, but I found my attention wandering at times.  It's so colorful and edited with such music video style flair that it reminded me of the cinematic equivalent of the candy Pop Rocks, sweet powdery stuff bursting on the tongue, leaving behind no nutritional experience.

     On the other hand, the film's doomed love story affected me uncomfortably, since the love triangle connecting singer/dancer Satine (Kidman), the Duke (Richard Roxburgh), and Christian (Ewan McGregor) reminded me of a similar situation in my past, causing me to think too much of that as I watched the film's rather dark second half.

     Movies evoke emotions, or should do so, even when they're abstract, so I gritted my consciousness towards experiencing the emotions evoked in me by the love triangle piece of the movie.  

     Christian in 1899 goes to Paris to write, to experience the Bohemian life.  He runs into Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo) who gets him into the Moulin Rouge, a dance and entertainment hall in a seedy part of the city.  An exceedingly lively place, everyone dances in step and breaks into medleys of modern songs by Nirvana, Madonna, and others.  Baz Luhrmann used anachronism in the only other film of his I've seen, Romeo + Juliet, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and the exquisite Claire Danes, an actress who in the 1990s somehow brought tears to my eyes every time I saw her.  When I watched the Shakespeare-derived film, its updating of the familiar Renaissance story didn't seem forced or weird, and neither did all of the contemporary songs in Moulin Rouge!  Sofia Coppola, in her masterpiece, Marie Antoinette, used contemporary songs by such bands as The Cure and Bow Wow Wow, and it worked.  

     Song lyrics from the modern era can translate meaningfully to a past setting, like late nineteenth century Paris.  Madonna's "Like a Virgin," used in the film, is a song depicting a woman's reawakened sense of being on the receiving end of a man's loving attentions, a reminder of what it was like for her to experience this for the first time.  It's a set of emotions translatable across the centuries.

     In any case, the film was written and directed by an Australian--the characters, even the solidly French Toulouse-Lautrec, speak and sing in English.  As Godard says, quoted in my previous post on Vladimir et Rosa, a movie is a movie, reality is reality.

     Committed to marrying the unappealing but rich Duke who can provide security, Satine finds herself in love with the poetic and fun Christian.  She's dying of consumption, coughing up blood now and then, collapsing occasionally while performing.  She's going to die, it's not a surprise, but the Duke's jealousy endangers Christian's life.  The Duke has invested his money in a big production at the Moulin Rouge, a musical drama written by Christian, who has made the story a transparent portrait of his love for Satine.  The Duke, too dense to figure this out by himself, finally gets clued in by one of the show's performers and demands a change in the script: the young musician in the musical drama should not get the girl.  She should choose instead the Maharajah--the show is set in India.

     The film's story isn't much, to the extent that I found the colors and flashes of movement, the music, all to be the main driving force of the movie.  It's acid trip cinema, the vividness of its hues and whirls very much like looking into a kaleidoscope.  If you want the movie to slow down you're mostly shit out of luck, not that it doesn't have its subdued moments.  

     I'm not sure what to make of Moulin Rouge!  I recognize that, since it made a huge amount of money worldwide, it's a popular film that must've wowed audiences in 2001, a magical swirling musical released a few months before 9/11, starring a gorgeous and talented woman, Nicole Kidman (also Australian like her director) and the actor who played young Obi Wan Kenobi, singing with a fine tenor voice between two Star Wars films.  

     I acknowledge the film's merits.  I just found the experience exhausting.

     

                                                                              Vic Neptune